January 28, 2022
Strong Māori show in book awards longlist
Books by some of our leading Māori poets and authors have made the long list for this year’s 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
They include Patricia Grace, whose memoir From the Centre: A Writer’s Life is up for the general non-fiction award.
Also in that category are historian Vincent O’Malley’s Voices from the New Zealand Wars: He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, and He Kupu Taurangi: Treaty Settlements and the Future of Aotearoa New Zealand by former treaty negotiations minister Christopher Finlayson and James Christmas.
Alice Tawhai has an entry in the fiction category, Alice in Therapy Land, along with Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka.
The poetry section includes collections by Tay Tibble, Ruby Solly and Nicole Titihuia Hawkins.
Titles of Maori interest make up almost half of the illustrated non-fiction contenders, including Hilary and John Mitchell’s He Ringatoi o ngā Tūpuna: Isaac Coates and his Māori Portraits, Qiane Matata-Sipu’s NUKU: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women, a Christchurch Art Gallery publication on The Distinguished Weavers of Te Kāhui Whiritoi by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, Donna Campbell, Awhina Tamarapa and Nathan Pōhio, and Te Papa Press’s Treasures for the Rising Generation: The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919–1923 edited by a teal led by Wayne Ngata and Anne Salmond.
The shortlist of 16 titles will be announced on March 2, and the winners will be announced during the Auckland Writers Festival in May.